Love and Love
by Ryah Ignis
Summary: A series of season 12 codas, ranging from Destiel, to Saileen, to general Mary awesomeness.
1. Heartbeat

If it wasn't for the fact that Sam is gone, Dean would be the happiest he's been in—well, the happiest he's been in a long time. He's got Mom in the backseat, and even though she's not exactly happy, she's breathing. He's got Cas beside him, whole and healthy and un-Lucifered.

He keeps stealing glances at the pair of them, as if they're going to vanish if he turns away for too long. After years of having good things waved under his nose only to have them yanked away again, he feels justified. Mom hasn't spoken since they got in the car. All she does is stare out the window like she can wish herself back to the eighties if she tries hard enough. Dean puts on some Zepplin, but he's not sure it's helping much. For Cas's part, he's just as silent, staring out the windshield. Usually, Dean would be joking with him about getting the snot beat out of him by a human, but he has a feeling that any insult—however joking—wouldn't go over well right now.

They reach the bunker later than Dean had expected (he's obeying traffic laws for once in his life, hyperaware of his mother in the backseat), so he offers Mom a pair of sweatpants and an old t-shirt and sends her to Sam's room to get some sleep.

By all rights, he should be completely exhausted. The last time he got sleep-when was the last time he got sleep? Dean knows it's been a long time, but God and the soul bomb and Mary and Sam and everything else that has gone down muddles his memory.

He's completely wired. So after he gets Mom stowed away safely, he doesn't go back to his own. He sits down in the kitchen instead.

It only takes Cas a few minutes to realize that he didn't go to sleep. Dean offers him a wave as he walks into the room. He looks more world-weary than Dean has ever seen him, and that's saying a lot. When their eyes meet, though, some of that melts away with a quiet smile.

Dean doesn't miss the silent double-take, though. Oh. The kitchen. Cas lived in his own world in this room for months. Of course he's doing a quick reality check.

"It's real."

Cas looks down. "Thank you."

Maybe it would have been better not to mention at all, but Dean is so tired of not mentioning things. When they get Sammy back, he swears he's gonna lock them all in a motel room somewhere (because, as much as it hurts, the bunker is compromised) and talk it all out. Everything from that night eleven years ago when he'd picked Sam up at his apartment until now.

Dean starts when he feels fingers beneath his chin, tilting his head up. Cas, in that freaky angel way of his, has somehow crossed the room without him noticing. He moves Dean's head back and forth a few times.

"The souls are gone," he says, breathing a sigh of relief. He's close enough that Dean can feel it on his face.

Then, Cas slides his hand further back and finds his pulse. A human way of checking. Dean desperately hopes he doesn't feel his heartrate tick up. They stay there for a heartbeat (Dean knows, he's counting) longer than they have to before stepping back.

"Amara just wanted to reunite," he says by way of explanation. "We had her wrong. She didn't want to destroy. She just wanted her brother."

"I failed Sam. I'm sorry."

Dean shakes his head. "No. That lady had a banishing sigil. You couldn't have stopped her."

Silence. Cas has always been a quiet kind of guy, but this is a different kind of quiet. It's as if Lucifer took something with him when Amara tore him out. Dean sets about making a cup of coffee—it takes more work than a beer would. Besides, he's not sure he's ready for Mom to know about his drinking habits quite yet; she always hated when Dad drank.

"You were good with Mom. I think she likes you."

Which is a miracle, considering that she'd grown up a hunter, trained to hate monsters on sight. Cas isn't a monster, but he sure as hell isn't human.

Still, Cas says nothing. Dean wonders how long he can let the guilty silence last before trying to convince him that Sam's disappearance isn't his fault. God knows he understands what it's like to blame yourself for something you couldn't control, but that doesn't mean he wants Cas to ever feel like that.

Just as he's about to say something else, anything else, to get the conversation rolling again, the kettle starts to whistle. Dean fills two mugs with boiling water and dumps cheap coffee grounds in both. A couple stirs, and then he passes over one of the mugs to Cas. He takes it, grips it like it's a lifeline.

Another glance over at Cas tells Dean that he's trying to work up the courage to say something, so Dean keeps his mouth shut. He takes a little sip of his coffee, searing his tongue on the liquid.

"Lately, that's all I seem to do."

Dean just blinks at him. "Get along with people's mothers?"

Even in his current state, Cas still has the energy to look at him like he's the biggest moron on the planet. "No. Fail you."

He knew that this wasn't going to be a quick fix. Dean can't say the wrong thing right now, so he takes a few seconds to collect his thoughts before he opens his mouth.

"Cas, what you did—I'm not mad, all right? I get it. I know what it's like to think the best thing you can do for the world is be someone be someone else." He smiles faintly at the memory. "You brought me back from that brink, remember? Beat me up to do it, too. You said back then that you'd given up everything for me. At the time, I didn't really believe it. Now? I know you did. The only thing that makes me mad about you saying yes is that I didn't get the chance to do the same for you before you did."

For a moment, Cas looks like he wants to argue. Then, the fight drains out of him. Dean gets to his feet and gestures wordlessly, grateful when Cas realizes what he wants. He pulls Cas in for another hug. He grips Dean just as tightly as he did last time.

Before he loses his nerve, Dean presses a quick kiss to the side of Cas's head. It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, he knows, but it's better than not trying to seal it up at all.


	2. On Eagle's Wings

Sam knows without a doubt that if he was above ground right now, with warm yellow sunlight spilling across his pillow, he'd be asleep. Instead, he's staring at the dark ceiling above his head, unable to roll over and go back to bed.

Cas's healing has taken all the physical pain away, but there's something bone-deep mentally exhausting about what Toni did to him. It's been a long time since someone's been in his head like that.

He sighs and looks over at the clock. Seven o'clock. An idea forms in his head as he swings himself out of bed. He slept clothed, half convinced that the Men of Letters would be back to reclaim their bunker any moment. All it takes is lacing up his shoes to get ready to go.

They threw together a room for Mary last night, so that's where he heads. He can't quite call her Mom in his head yet. That word carries a weight he's not sure he's ready to carry. But he's ready to take a step.

"Hey. I want to take you somewhere."

Mary blinks blearily up at him. Her hair is an absolute mess, and her arms are wrapped around Dad's journal, as if she fell asleep with it. She's wearing Dean's robe and the softest one of Sam's t-shirts he could find. Sam's throat constricts. She's not the angel Dad always painted her as. She's better: she's human.

"Okay," she says, somewhat dubiously. "Let me get dressed."

Sam makes his way into the war room, where he scribbles a quick note so his brother won't panic. There's a beer sitting on top of North America. He shoves it out of sight just as Mary walks into the room.

"Ready," she says.

He smiles. "All right. Let's go."

/

Sam's right-Dean panics as soon as he realizes that both Sam and Mom's rooms are empty. By the time he makes it to the note, he's already pulled his gun out of his waistband and shouted for them both at the top of his lungs.

"Dean!"

Cas bursts into the room like the hallway behind him is on fire. Dean isn't ready for the wave of affection at the sight of him. All it took was one panicked yell, and Cas came swooping in to save him.

"It's okay. Sam and Mom are out."

A completely irrational part of him feels a pang of jealousy at the thought, much like his four-year-old self had felt at the appearance of a baby brother. Dean shoves it down. He's got four years on Sam in the mom department. He can share. Totally.

"Your mojo doing okay?" Dean asks. "Healing Sam had to take a lot out of you."

It's a good thing for the Men of Letters that Cas had been able to heal every bump and scratch. If he hadn't, and if Dean had gotten an idea of just how bad Sam's injuries were, he would have tracked them all down and killed them. (Well. Only if he beat Mom to it.)

Cas shrugs. "My Grace is the strongest it's been in years."

Which isn't saying much. Dean remembers the angel that raised him from Hell, the solid granite statue of a creature and can't understand where his Cas came from.

His Cas? Where did that come from?

Dean clears his throat and speaks before that thought can go any further. "So. Mom in action. Weird."

Not exactly the best word for the utter confusion of seeing his mother a) stab someone and b) beat up on a seasoned fighter like Lady What's Her Face.

Cas inclines his head. "I've found that sometimes the people we idolize are not what we expect."

He blinks once, twice, before he understands what Cas is talking about. When he does, his breath catches in his throat. He's been so consumed in the shock of not dying, of Mom being returned to him, of Sam being missing that he's forgotten.

Dean thinks about Mom sitting with her legs hanging out of the Impala, saying that she wasn't okay and takes a deep breath. Things are different now. "Do you—I mean—are you…upset, at all?"

/

The church has seen better days. Mary can see it in the half empty Sunday school classroom, in the average age of the churchgoer being sixty-five. It's the very last place she expected Sam to take her. Somehow it doesn't seem like there's a lot of room for God in the six foot four muscle mass that's replaced her baby.

"A lot of things change," Sam says as they make their way to a middle pew. "This doesn't."

In a way, it's easier to look Sam in the face than it is Dean. He doesn't look at her with expectations, with an image of how she's supposed to be, with stars in his eyes. He looks at her like a mystery. Well, they're mysteries to her, too. She can deal with that.

"When we were bouncing around the county, I snuck out on Sundays sometimes. Dean thought there was a girl for the longest time." He smiles at the memory, and Mary's heart constricts. "We stayed with this one pastor a few dozen times. I had one of his Bibles for the longest time, but I lost it in the shuffle somewhere along the line."

It's the clearest picture of their childhoods that she's seen so far. John's journal is just as much of an enigma as its author. He prefers—preferred—subtext and doublespeak, never saying quite what he meant. It's like an inside joke, and she's frozen out.

"No iTablets in here, are there?"

He smiles, fondly, like you might when a little kid says something almost right. Stupid future. "No. Just books."

She can deal with books. Mary hasn't had the time to go through the library yet, but she wants to. She's always been a slow reader, but she likes words.

Just as he finishes his assurances, the service starts. Mary gets to her feet, holding the service outline like a lifeline. Mary puts her thoughts of God's sister and real life angels out of her head for a moment. They sing three hymns before she recognizes one.

When _On Eagle's Wings_ begins, Mary sucks in a sharp breath. She hasn't cried so far—sure she's felt like it, but there haven't been tears, not yet. She can feel them coming now. One dribbles out before she can stop it.

Sam must be watching her out of the corner of his eye just like his brother does, as if she's going to vanish if they take their eyes off of her. He shuffles uncertainly towards her and pats her elbow before deciding to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

"I'm the reason this all happened," Mary confesses in a hush before she even really knows what she's saying. "The yellow-eyed demon wouldn't have come after you if it wasn't for me."

The choir keeps singing as a few more tears drip steadily down her nose. Mary closes her eyes, willing them to stop. At the feeling of Sam rubbing soothing circles into her shoulder, she realizes how much older he is than her—only a few years, but he shouldn't be older at all—and the tears start again.

"Yeah, he wouldn't have. And you know what? I would have never been strong enough to withstand Lucifer. I would have broken the world."

Mary bites down on her lip so hard that she expects to taste blood like they do in books. All she gets for her trouble is a small swell of her lip. Sam takes a step back as the song ends.

"We're gonna figure this out."

She looks up at him ( _up_ , not down), up at the gentle man her son has become and nods. Somehow, they're going to.

/

"I'm sorry He wasn't what you wanted him to be," Dean says.

He still remembers the feeling of holding Dean's amulet in his hands, begging it to _do_ something. Grow bright, warm up, anything. He spent hours just staring at it, rolling it over in his palms like he could somehow activate it just by wishing.

And all along, he'd been the prophet Cas died in front of.

"I looked for him for a year," he says quietly.

He sits at the map table and folds his hands neatly in front of him. He still marvels at the feel of being able to move his fingers under his own autonomy again. Being confined like that made him feel for Jimmy Novak.

"And it turns out that he was—what would you call it?—a deadbeat."

Cas doesn't expect to feel Dean's hand rest on his shoulder. He leans into the touch despite himself. It's not as if he got much human contact over the last few months. Years ago, that meant nothing to him. Now, it's everything.

"It sucks," Dean agrees. Then, "You know, Cas, you don't need them. The angels. God. You have us. Mom and Sam. Me."

Something swells in Cas's chest, a feeling that he can't quite identify. Holding his breath, Cas reaches up and tangles his fingers with Dean's. They slot together like they were made to. Dean doesn't pull away.

"You?"

"Yeah, Cas." Dean smiles, softer than Cas remembers. He's not sure if it's the not-dying or the return of his mother that's done it. "You'll always have me."


End file.
